


If the World's So Small

by greenbucket



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Emotions, F/F, Pre-The Raven Boys, Teen Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-22 10:39:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11965704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenbucket/pseuds/greenbucket
Summary: Blue isn’t one for films, or for spending money, or for spending time with people she knows little of other than as an association with places she’d rather not be – like school, or work, or her trapped-in-a-small-town future – but she thinks the cinema with Cialina would have been nice.





	If the World's So Small

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't read TRC in a very long time and I don't remember if Cialina is actually this close in age to Blue but for the sake of this fic she is and Henrietta doesn't have a cinema. Set the academic year prior to the start of The Raven Boys.

The first time Cialina asks if Blue wants to come to the cinema with her, Blue doesn’t think anything of it.

“I’m fine, thanks,” she says, focusing on making sure she’s got all the little salts in order before the new kid arrives in fifteen minutes and probably messes them all up, silently thanking whatever power that be that she doesn’t have to train them.

Blue doesn’t have time, inclination, or money to randomly go to the cinema with a co-worker who’s not bad to work with but isn’t really anyone apart from that. She has dog walking to do and at least two to three weeks of ignored homework to complete before the end of the year lest her grades slip beyond all repair – who has time for something like the cinema? Cialina certainly didn’t seem like someone with time to go to the cinema. Blue isn’t even sure Henrietta has a cinema. She's pretty sure it's the next town over. What are they going to do, _drive_ to the cinema too? In whose car?

Cialana wipes down the counter quickly one last time, folds her apron into her backpack and slings it on her back, then checks her hair in her reflection in the wall menu – all without looking at Blue. “No problem,” she says finally. “See ya.”

Blue responds in kind but doesn’t watch Cialana as she leaves. She takes a moment to think about how she doesn’t even know what’s on at the cinema right now before she’s distracted again, this time by a child crying when they knock over their entire milkshake with a splat. Blue goes to get the mop.

 

* * *

 

The second time, Blue sees Cialina outside of Nino’s which is disturbing enough in and of itself.

She’s letting herself speed freely downhill because she’s dawdled with the groceries Jimi had requested at a shout, Blue half-out the door, and with collecting the packages Calla had asked of her that had been her initial reason for leaving. That and the fact that Fox Way has become only more oppressive as summer passes, the muddling noise and too many people grating and catching on Blue in all the wrong ways in the last surge of heat. Work is hardly a reprieve, nor the thought of school looming on the horizon, and there’s only so many times someone can take a walk before the same streets become unbearable. She wishes so hard she could spend her summers travelling that it hurts, the sting from listening to already returning Aglionby boys gloating bursting anew every time she revisits it.

Luckily, Blue has factored the dawdling and moping into her time management. She came to the conclusion they were fair game so long as she accepted the possible injury of reckless cycling and Maura being concerned in light of said possible injury. It feels good to take her feet off the pedals, let the wind blow through her hair and accept what happens happens.

What happens turns out to be she nearly crashes into Cialina who steps out into the previously empty street without looking. Blue yells something rude very loudly and nearly goes over the handlebars trying to stop in time while Cialina shrieks and nearly gets stuck in the wheel trying to stop Blue’s bike from toppling over. There are a few seconds of embarrassing and uncoordinated scrambling before they’re both safely upright again.

“Why did you do that?” Blue asks her, her heart pounding in sickening jerks and nothing like the cool exhilaration of moments before. She’s unfairly irritated with Cialina for ruining it, the first calm she’s felt in days.

“It was an accident,” Cialina says like Blue’s being stupid, though still checking Blue’s got a foot down before letting go of the bike. “You were the one that came out of nowhere.”

Which is fair but that doesn’t mean Blue has to admit it. She tries to shake her hair away from her face instead where it’s sticking to her temples but it doesn’t work and she just feels ridiculous as Cialina watches. Cialina probably never has to do that, her hair always off her face because it goes upward-ish usually and especially so in high stress situations like Nino’s, because she's a little stretched thin but ultimately practical and predictable like that.

“Thanks for saving the bike,” she says after a pause because that doesn’t place the blame anywhere but the saving of the bike – which isn’t even hers, she just picked it up off Fox Way’s lawn, who knows whose wrath she might have faced – is something that deserves thanks.

“You’re welcome,” Cialina says. Then: “I’m just headed to the cinema. Want to come with?”

It’s here that Blue realises they’re interacting outside the usual framework of Nino’s. There are no customers to make demands, no tables to serve or counters to clean, no end of shift acting as a time limit on their interactions. It’s weird to think Cialina exists outside of the walls of shiny diner plastic and sticky floors. She’s not even in the very loosely enforced Nino’s uniform – her shorts look worn and comfortable, her shirt a light blue that would show up every stain a shift could acquire, the jewellery around her wrists against all health and safety regulations. Cialina never seems to not have an aura of stress but her posture seems looser. Blue finds her eyes catching awkwardly on Cialina’s waist and looks away quickly.

“I’m fine, thanks,” she says without thinking.

Cialina maybe deflates a little, Blue thinks, but then she shrugs. “All right. See you at work.”

This time Blue watches her as she crosses the street and carries on her way to the cinema. Not that Blue has found out if this cinema actually exists, or where it might be if it does, since she feels like she’s explored every inch of Henrietta that deserves exploring a dozen times over and she’s never found a cinema. Maybe Cialina has a car or a very vivid imagination. Maybe Blue should have said yes, the thought of the long evening ahead stretching out in front of her with little appeal.

But then she remembers Jimi’s groceries and Calla’s packages and the promise she made to Persephone to lend her magnifying powers to something or other and the fact she has dog walking early tomorrow and bedding new flowers in the hot afternoon. And Cialina probably already has people to go with, other Mountain View kids that Blue certainly can’t remember seeing her with but that doesn’t mean much. Blue doesn’t pay a lot of attention and the summer has been long. She sets off home again, time management ruined.

 

* * *

 

The third time Cialina asks, Blue doesn’t remember what is said to her or what she says in return.

She’s so swamped with readjusting her schedule to school and her upped responsibilities as a not-psychic and the exhaustion that seems to just seep into her from the stillness of Henrietta all around her, the stagnation sinking into her skin, that it feels like time is warping. Hours pass by in a blink, like at school where she doesn’t even remember taking her sparse notes, and this carries on all the way until partway through a shift or partway through the walk home or partway through dinner when suddenly time slows and drags and fatigue hits strong enough that Blue could curl up forever.

That night she eats dinner late alone in the kitchen straight from the box she found it in in the fridge after taking a nap that lasted longer than planned, the house still and quiet around her for once. The quiet, for all that it’s a luxury, allows space for what feels uncomfortably like loneliness to grow from where Blue keeps it carefully squashed down in the tiniest corner of her heart and she pushes it away harder. She looks around for the day’s paper to see what would have been in the cinema if she had said yes but she can’t find one anywhere.

Blue isn’t one for films, or for spending money, or for spending time with people she knows little of other than as an association with places she’d rather not be – like school, or work, or her trapped-in-a-small-town future – but she thinks it would have been nice.

 

* * *

 

Of course, following that realisation Cialina shows no inclination to ask Blue again.

Blue finds herself trying to start conversation when they share shifts but Nino’s is far from the best place for it and Blue feels prickly and weird about it, starting conversations with people her age minus any provocation being far from her strong point for all that she knows how to charm anyone over 25. She sees Cialina approximately once outside work, in passing at the school entrance when they both arrive late and Blue nods and Cialina smiles but it means little.

It doesn’t help that Cialina can retain at least a passable farce of politely chatty, occasionally laying on the accent a little too heavy if Blue was to critique, with just about anyone even when her stress aura is at maximum. Blue can’t tell if she’s being humoured in her awkward attempts to make friends or receiving genuine engagement.

She has no practice in making friends and it’s hard to ignore the instinct to retreat when there’s no immediate, golden-light-and-angels click of a moment between them, no all-encompassing meeting of kindred souls that Blue has filled her expectations and dreams with since otherwise what is she? Mean, cold hearted, a bitch, stuck up? She’s heard all of it before and she doesn’t believe it, not really, but sometimes she’s not sure. She’s 16. Why else can’t she make fucking friends? Who started holding the other at arm’s length first, everyone else or her?

Instead, Blue and Cialina share snippets:

 

“I’m okay, though I completely bombed the chemistry test today. My notes didn’t even make sense last night.”

“Richardson’s the teacher, right?”

“Ugh. Yes.”

“Sucks. Bet it went better than you thought.”

 

and

 

“Did you see the cat next to the bins just now? Quick, I’ll cover your tables for a minute – it has a monocle marking.”

 

and

 

“God, could some of these boys been any less subtle about staring at my boobs? Like are you kidding me?”

“They probably think they’re seducing you with it. Maybe they should spend some of that money getting some common sense and decency knocked into them. Or at least on buying a mirror so they can see how ridiculous they look.”

“Don’t, you’ll make me laugh. I’m trying to look intimidating.”

 

and

 

“So I was watching Teen Wolf–”

“You were watching _what?_ ”

“Don’t pretend not to know it.”

“I’m not pretending.”

“So you never watched even an episode?”

“Why would I be interested in a show with the worst effects I’ve ever seen–”

“So you have seen it!”

“… One episode. Not even one. Half of one. A quarter. A reflection in a window.”

 

and

 

“So you help out with the family business _and_ walk dogs _and_ work here?”

“And odd jobs here and there.”

A laugh, passing busily behind the counter. “Wow, and I thought I was stressed. You're unstoppable.”

 

It’s nice.

Blue feels like it’s a solid foundation for something, a foundation they’re slowly adding to bit by bit together but still as steady as the kind of friendship-forged-in-fire she’d always set her sights on. It settles something in her to see evidence that such a thing can exist forming in front of her own eyes, feel it forming in herself with the worry when Cialina looks too tired and warmth in her stomach when they’re back on shift together after a few days separate.

Despite the conscious effort she’s made to reach out to her, it still comes as a surprise to Blue that she actually likes Cialina. It’s not pleasant to confront the reality that even when Blue thought she’d moved past seeing her just as a fill-in companion at work something must have still lingered, or that the reaching out had been more self-centred than she thought, a semi-desperate lunge away from the yawning loneliness and claustrophobia of Henrietta. It’s not something she’s proud of.

But Cialina is hard not to like. She frequently mixes up her whole family’s whites with their reds even though she’s been on laundry duty since she could be trusted with the detergent and she has hands down the worst taste in media consumption Blue has ever encountered (not that it stops her Googling it all via stuttering internet connection because she’s never been trusted with this kind of intimacy, people’s real and honest _interests_. It fascinates her even as it infuriates her when Cialina laughs and calls yet another one of Blue’s better-media-suggestions pretentious, voice warm.)

Cialina subscribes to ‘the customer is always right’ like it’s the word of God until the second she’s behind the kitchen doors, at which point her reactions range from a restrained sigh at best to a 30 second, cuss-filled rant at worse, which has only happened once. She tells Blue both when she thinks her clothes are innovative and when she thinks they’re too far. She knows how to play basketball and is happy to teach anyone that wants to know, even though she gets shy about it.

Blue settles into it, feels pleased with it. She likes Cialina.

Sometimes, she thinks maybe she _likes_ Cialina. It’s something her mind skirts around and she’s nervous to look closer at it. Sure, Cialina is attractive in a way that has made Blue unsure before if she wants to _be_ her or _be with_ her but what does Blue know? Cialina certainly isn’t the first girl Blue’s looked at and felt something over but it’s hard to pull apart – is she enamoured and stupid with the rush of friendship or is it really something else? Sure, she’s attractive but what does Blue want to actually _do_ with that?

Blue turns it over in her mind during menial tasks like school and serving tables and walking and helping in the garden and looking up what career paths are open to her for a moment before it makes her feel ill and gets pushed aside until next time. The prophecy of true love’s kiss lingers; presumptive though a label like love might be, it’s a risk Blue knows she’ll always be taking if she kisses someone until one day it’s too late.

Ultimately, she decides it doesn’t matter whether she _likes_ Cialina or not because she can’t push their whatever-it-is outside the realm of Nino’s. Cialina doesn’t offer the cinema again, is as elusive to find outside work as ever, and Blue feels flushed and embarrassed all over whenever she tries to buck up and suggest something even as simple as walking part of their journeys home together. 

She’s irritated with herself and irritated with Cialina for stopping showing an interest as soon as Blue showed some back and it all twists up until Blue’s spending half her time ignoring half her emotions because they’re largely messy and unsolvable. The women of Fox Way take to giving her annoying and superior looks that only make her feel worse. If Cialina notices she doesn’t say anything, just as Blue doesn’t question the sources of Cialina’s constant stress, and for a while it’s a status quo neither of them push the boundaries of.

 

* * *

 

It comes to a head as spring break is coming to a close.

Blue feels like she’s been working every waking moment of her life for the entire break and she’s pretty sure she’s currently on her twelfth consecutive day of Nino’s shifts. Her feet and back ache and she got all mediocre to poor grades back on her tests just before break started (as if the ongoing downward spiral of her academic career wasn't apparent enough) and one of the cousins has had some kind of flu that’s made her a tiny storm cloud over Fox Way for days. Yesterday it spread to the third graders she helps out with work so they were terrible too.

Cialina calls in to say she’s coming in late so Blue has to cover all of her tables because no one bothers to call in anyone else so by the time Cialina arrives Blue is worked off her feet and kind of pissed off. She doesn’t even nod back when Cialina, slipping her apron over her head, gives a muffled greeting, just stalks off to serve the endless sea of fucking raven boys she’s been left with. It’s an empty kind of satisfaction that isn’t actually satisfying at all to see Cialina look a little hurt.

They’re both on shift until closing and it’s quiet and thorny between them, no respite of normal conversation that has become the norm between them to keep the frustrations at bay. Blue deals with six returned meals, three spilt drinks, roughly fifty cases of napkins shoved in wet glasses to congeal and straw wrappers shredded everywhere, three smirking Aglionby boys telling her to smile and two more trying to hit on her, the last of whom dares to lift a hand as if to touch her arm. She jerks back and away from the table, marching to the kitchen and barking the table’s order even as she feels the last threads of her control slipping from her grasp.

By the time it’s just her and Cialina mopping the floors and stacking chairs, Blue can feel her chin wobbling with angry, exhausted tears. She isn’t going to let Cialina see because it’s not like Cialina even _cares_ , she left Blue to deal with it all on her own and it’s not even like she actually likes Blue – or maybe she does, but she doesn’t _like_ Blue and Blue didn’t think that it mattered that much but suddenly it really, really does and it’s awful. Blue isn’t fond of crying in front of people anyway, regardless of whether she’s developed a terrible, no good, useless crush on them.

She thinks she might have just gotten away with it, taking her jacket and heading towards the door with a vague wave back to Cialina, when the dreaded words:

“Hey, Blue, are you all right?”

How anyone is supposed to stay strong in light of those words when they’re upset, Blue doesn’t know.

The crying comes out snotty and loud and jagged and Blue thinks it might have been a long time coming, the way she feels a release like some kind of pressure valve that’s been at absolute maximum whatever the fuck for much too long. She’s aware of Cialina’s arm around her shoulder leading her out of Nino’s into what amounts to the parking lot, aware of Cialina locking up and guiding her down onto the wall that everyone leaves their bikes against where Blue is aware she cries for quite a bit longer.

After a while, the tears dry up and her face just feels raw and her nose clogged. She’s sure the embarrassment will set in hard soon enough. Cialina’s arm is still around her shoulders and she’s offering a tissue with her spare hand. Blue takes it and does the best she can to wipe up the snot.

“Sorry,” she says, surprised by how hoarse she is.

Cialina sounds quite calm when she says, “Don’t worry about it. Crying can be like that sometimes.”

“Still. Sorry to make you sit there with me like that. Sorry I was mean earlier.”

A shrug. “Want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know. Not really.”

There’s a pause. Blue is aware that Cialina’s arm is _still_ around her shoulders and she doesn’t know what to do with it, whether to take the comfort as is or move in closer – even have a hug, a real hug that isn’t from her mother – or move away entirely. Blue Sargent; sensible, strong, self-sufficient.

“I guess I figured– well,” Cialina says, voice determinedly casual. “I thought maybe it might be some crushing uncertainty about the future because you’re stuck in a small town with few prospects and few real friends and you want to make something of your life but you don’t know how, or if you’re good enough, and maybe all you’re good for is waiting tables and being disrespected by customers and doing endless mundane things you don’t really enjoy so why bother.”

Blue blinks. “Oh.”

It’s a strange experience, sitting with a girl she barely cared to know only a few months ago outside their shitty workplace in the dark covered in dried tears and snot. Blue looks at her and can barely see her in the faint efforts of the streetlight a little down the way now Nino's doesn't have a lit-up sign anymore. Perhaps it’s for the best. She can’t imagine how heady the she’d feel if she could really see Cialina, mix these new emotions with the ones she already feels when she looks at her. Maura will be worried if Blue doesn’t come home soon but Blue can’t leave yet, not after that. She feels wordless, unsure of how to express herself. Like her chest is lighter than it’s been in years but she’s more grounded than ever. It’s a strange feeling, being known.

“Not to rain on your pity parade for one, but you’re not the only one,” Cialina says, squeezing Blue’s shoulders once quickly before letting go. She shifts over a bit and Blue wishes she’d come back.

“I didn’t know,” Blue says honestly. Is that superiority rearing its head again or is that natural, to assume you’re alone in all your worries and troubles only to be proven wrong?

“Just because I watch Teen Wolf, doesn’t mean I’m not a complex being.”

Blue laughs, croaky. “Shut up. I know that. You just always have things under control, even when I can see you’re stressed.”

“It’s called having a managed anxiety disorder.” Cialina says, quickly, hesitantly, firmly. “There are useful strategies.”

“Oh,” Blue says again. “I didn’t know.”

“I know.”

“I’m glad it’s managed. For your sake.”

“Well, you know. It’s a work in progress. I want to act, so. We'll see.”

Blue twists to look at her fully even in the darkness. “Act? I didn’t know you could act. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Cialina sounds embarrassed. “I don’t know, it’s just a bit of a dream at the moment. We’re still young, you know? Who knows what will happen.”

“You should do something with the drama club.”

Even more embarrassed: “I already am. Just a small part for now but I’ve been going to rehearsals. It’s why I came in late today, they rescheduled without a lot of warning. Sorry.”

Blue fights the urge to push Cialina off the wall. “Why didn’t you say? I’m going to come and watch.”

“You hate school,” Cialina says like the case is closed.

“But I like _you_ ,” Blue says because it really is that simple and sometimes she doesn’t think before she speaks even when she should. She knows it came out way too fervently. Her stomach rolls horribly.

Cialina has gone quiet beside her.

“Oh,” she says eventually. Then, almost laughing: “I didn’t know.”

Blue can feel her face glowing with heat but the laugh didn’t sound like a bad one. It sounded like a good laugh, fanning the flames of hope in her stomach. She doesn’t know what to say. She feels abruptly twelve. Feeling clumsy but bolstered by the way the light catches on Cialina’s smile, so wide her face must already ache, Blue grabs for her hand.

“So?” she asks nonsensically because who knows what she’s asking. Will you keep working on this foundation with me? Will you date me? Will you ask me to the cinema that I still haven’t found again? Will you share this existential dread and trapped small-town fatigue with me even though I wish you didn’t feel it, I’m so glad you do and we can get out of this together?

Maybe Cialina gets all of that or maybe she doesn’t but she gets something, she gets some part of _Blue_ , and she squeezes Blue’s hand hard. “Yes,” she says. Then she laughs again, loud and happy this time. “God, I asked you out _so_ many times. I thought you must hate me for being so pushy”

“Just because I turned you down all those times you asked me to the cinema, doesn’t mean I didn’t want to date you,” Blue says, smiling and revelling in the feeling of Cialina’s hand in her own, both of their hands chapped from Nino’s cheap cleaning products.

“You didn’t at the time,” Cialina says. “You don’t have to pretend you did.”

“I know,” Blue concedes even though it seems weird and wrong that she looked at Cialina and thought her uninspired or boring or whatever else. That she looked at her and thought that because, what? She goes to Mountain View just like her? Just like most people? It feels like limiting herself which Blue has never liked to do. “But I didn’t hate you either. It just went all over my head, I can be like that sometimes. Now you can ask me again, we can share popcorn and share an armrest.”

Cialina laughs at her _again_ , this time like all the times before where she’s laughed at Blue’s interests being ‘pretentious’, at her disconnect from other Henrietta residents her age. It should sting but the fondness softens it out, makes Blue feel something like the flip side of being _known_ , like being accepted and appreciated.

“Blue,” Cialina says, “there isn't actually a cinema. Not a real one. I mean, not in Henrietta so unless you want my brother to chaperone us it’s just a projector set up in our dad’s old garage and other people come along if they want. We take turns choosing the film. Mostly I pick horror movies, I think they're funny.”

“Huh,” Blue says. Figures why she couldn't find the cinema.

“Let me guess, you didn’t know.”

Blue rolls her eyes at that but there’s no real heat. “I don’t like horror but I guess I’ll bring popcorn next time anyway.”

“Sounds like a date,” Cialina says, pleased.

Cialina’s hand is so warm in Blue’s and it would be a really good moment and Blue wants so desperately to kiss her. She can’t imagine how it would feel, is so eager to find out she almost forgoes being sensible about it. Is it a risk she could take? How does she know true love from not? Do you have to love them yet or just have the potential? How much does a pronoun matter to fate?

“I can’t kiss you,” Blue blurts out before either of them can act. She really hopes it isn’t a deal breaker to Cialina. “My mom said if I ever kiss someone they might die.”

Cialina takes a moment to consider this. “Said it in like a psychic way?”

“Yeah.”

Cialina takes another moment to consider this. She doesn’t take her hand out of Blue’s.

“What if I kissed you?” she asks. “Not for real, just–” she leans in and Blue’s breath catches in her throat but she doesn’t want her to stop. She can feel Cialina’s breath on her cheek and it has her heart rate sky rocketing; by contrast, the kiss on her cheek is gentle and brief, a quick press of lips as close to Blue’s mouth as she guesses Cialina dares and as close as either of them can bear.

It feels like a lot, for a kiss on the cheek. Blue shivers and she can hear Cialina’s breath shake a little as she moves away again. Blue stares into the dark and tries to take stock. She doesn’t want to forget what she’s feeling now.

Cialina says after a pause, tone light but her hand still clasped tightly in Blue’s giving her away, “Alternatively, we could try that one saran wrap idea from Pushing Daisies, did I ever show you that one?”

She hadn’t; Blue had discovered it herself when she’d looked the damned show up since Cialina had mentioned it so many times and had had a slightly hysterical giggling fit about being able to relate. Cialina doesn’t need to know that.

Instead, she really does try to push Cialina off the wall who grabs Blue tight and shushes her even though she isn’t speaking. Cialina keeps getting interrupted by her own laughter as she tries to defend the idea and the possibilities of Henrietta open up to Blue in ways she’d never imagined all around her.


End file.
